superpower how is that change for america since the publication it's clear that over the past six years the image of the united states in the world has improved quite a bit a lot of that is the election of barack obama a man who. could who obviously reflected more of the better side of of america's diversity a second element was the growing obviousness of the fact that the problems of the world are not created by the united states the united states contributes to some problems contributes to solving other problems but this the shrinking role of the united states as a sole superpower has made the u.s. more popular rather than the us i think well since your resignation over the invasion of iraq in two thousand and three there's been a lot of u.s. led intervention around the world this being the instances of libya pressure being put on syria has been involvement in afghanistan and in pakistan so on reflection

is your resignation actually achieved anything the point in leaving was to raise the domestic political cost of an absolutely stupid policy and i contributed in a small way to doing that unfortunately it is you know it is a fundamental fact of diplomatic life that domestic politics always trumps foreign national interests you know in every country in the world i mean the us actually does better than many countries in this respect but there is a an internal mechanism in every country that exaggerates the ability the the prestige the influence the competence of a country in intervening outside its borders. and the the us. is driven or rather most of the various interests that drive u.s. foreign policy are motivated by reasonably you know beneficent motives combined

with this self interest that they may not even recognize but the the results tend to be poor but. not always and there tends to be a short term logic in the situation which is that we can talk about in detail if you want but when you did resign you were treated as a dissenter as an outcast. did the u.s. state treat you then and how have they treated you since the state department by and large treated me very well but very cautiously that is to say. a lot of people who quietly agreed with me sent very quiet messages. not through official channels to say so but the state department will behave completely correctly there was a very minor efforts you know essentially from the think tank establishment to say

pay no attention to this man he's just another you know malcontent but but by and large. what i said was allowed to speak for itself. other services are much more vindictive the intelligence services if if you dissent in the cia or the n.s.a. they will use these draconian secrecy laws to persecute you well before you quit you did express your dissatisfaction about what was going on what is the policy making and decision making process i mean who has the final decision and is it actually very inflexible it depends on the issue in minor issues that are not of major domestic political importance the state department policy process is is pretty good the job of the state department is to balance all of the conflicting interests with large issues like the iraq war. the reason i did not really

protest in advance was it was clear to all of us in the state department that the decision had been taken by the white house and imposed and there was no room for discussion on that issue on the state department had been completely marginalized there even colin powell who you know had serious reservations and fought and was essentially stomped all over by by cheney by rumsfeld by well who by a weak president who allowed himself to be manipulated by by people who were savvier than he but despite all that you would say in your opinion that it is the white house that makes the final call ultimately it is the white house yes and the the difficulty is the president the united states is not an expert on foreign policy he's someone who's instincts you know tend to be very sound but his instincts are

formed by the the the domestic policy process and how did george w. bush was completely correct that war is popular at home he was a catastrophic president until september eleventh two thousand and one where even though he handled it badly the mere fact of a crisis that he was handling made him reelected bully and no one punished him for the iraq war in two thousand and four even though it was already by then a disastrous war ok well let's talk about the current president at the moment president barack obama do you feel that there is a way forward for the u.s. and russia to work together to solve the crisis in syria the u.s. and russia have a lot of interests in common and. i hope that that . domestic politics in both countries will be put to the side to allow the serious

discussions to take place i own instinct is you know to stay out of it as much as possible aware that even the most well intentioned humanitarian intervention has side effects that can be tremendously destructive but obviously the u.s. and russia need to be talking the need to be figuring out ways that they can put pressure on all sides in a coordinated way to push for a negotiated solution that isolates the the radical islamists as far as possible well it is complicated but one issue that isn't complicated is the use of drones and they you seem pakistan do you think president obama will change the policy or not to be frank that's my biggest disappointment with president obama that he accepted the politically convenient

logic that the problem of terrorism is one that can be personalized identify this person take him out and buy extra judicial means and the problem will be solved and that's obviously not true the the major direct cost of the drone campaign in pakistan is to deal legitimize the government of pakistan in the eyes of its own people a government that cannot you know. keep its own house in order and allows foreigners to to launch rooms is a government that people see as weak and incapable of protecting the national interest america needs a strong legitimate government of pakistan because that country is a very dangerous mess with problems all around it. and so i am completely against drone strikes partly because they do not solve the problem

of terrorism even terrorism directed against us secondly they they make pakistan more unstable and we want a stable pakistan so i mean not to be too simplistic but you think if pakistan could put a stronger government in power then the us would not use drones is that a fair assessment a strong legitimate pakistani government would not tolerate drones but also we would not need to use drones it's a chicken and egg situation but. i would say the united states should have a much less visible presence not only in pakistan but throughout the middle east we should go back to traditional diplomacy. you know close private engagement through embassies but. the idea that the u.s. military can be affected cost effective diplomats in the region is proved to be

wrong. when tom and i bet a is another contentious issue do you think that president obama will close that well he promised to close it he tried to close it congress would not let him close it. there is this psychosis about terrorism that terrorists are intrinsically evil people that sort of contagious like lepers who if you let them out into the world they will infect everything around them and this is nonsense you know some of the people in guantanamo were a few of them were innocent most of them were simply you know people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with an ideology that had pushed them into doing something that was you know fatally dangerous that there the united states government has lost so much from this violation of its own constitutional standards. you know it would be better to let them all go even give them

a kalashnikov as when you let them go but you cannot persuade the u.s. congress of that for three or superstition reason you know this superstitious reasons fundamentally now in the in the region is the whole we've got problems in the north of the mediterranean economically and politically we've got a lot of turmoil in the south. do you feel there is any solution to this when g. feel that things might improve we're currently living in a world where the in balance between resources and population has put massive stress on democratic institutions a lot of those institutions seem to be failing at the moment. we need to recognize the direct link between having the resources to distribute and making consensus based government possible. my hope is that

it technological change and political progress will go together to inject new resources into into the region enough to buy the kind of consensus required for democratic government i know that's kind of abstract but if that doesn't happen we will see. this breakdown on all sides getting worse and so we need to address it directly at a global level. fascinating to see thank you very much for your thoughts thank you . some of these traditional chili lines they've been bred and developed and passed

down from generation to. this is a total destruction of the culture of mexico by telling them what i mean this is not going to impact a swelling in mexico whatever happens here. we're eating at about six in the in the world in all the wars and so forth. to make the engineered crops why do you think this country is full of obese and sick people because we have a crappy food system.

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good. luck. a little. good laboratory was to build the most sophisticated. about anything tim's mission to teach me. this is why you should care only.

the latest news of the week's top stories on the hunt. the one hundred. saw themselves with a definite contention with. the u.s. government seizes the phone records of over one hundred journalists from the associated press a swanky media outrage but the white house insists it was unaware of the probe. syrian government forces take the fight to the rebels in a key town near the lebanese border seen as an entry point smuggled weapons and mercenaries. and most spies in disguise a russian security exposes a cia chief in moscow as he was intelligence is led to a face off to getting called to trying to be a russian agent.